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The focus of this project is no longer solely, or even largely KONY2012. While it was and continues to be an impressive phenomenon it has become, in my mind at least, part of a larger trend of which it is only a single case study. The past two years have seen entire segments of various nations rise up, some in protest, some through elections leading to dramatic shifts in government, and others by means of the strike.

Or, perhaps, events such as these are not so atypical as they appear, but only coming to light in far greater numbers due to the transparency and immediacy of the internet and the rise of alternative media.

I would like to argue that many social movements in general are due to the growing ease with which information can be disseminated (and do so on a global scale, connecting disparate groups and causes) and the digital media that is now widespread.

In the US for example, inequality was barely addressed as an issue of public concern outside of progressive and academic circles. Today we see the New York Times Online “Front Page” publishing roundtable talks and discussions about the issue. A year ago Occupy was just a small group working against Wall St. Now we find the nomenclature of their movement being referenced in popular culture (TV etc.) as well as the mainstream press. With growing rapidity, it seems, the ‘dirty little secrets’ of many societies are being put in the spotlight, arousing public discontent.

Granted, this shift may never have occurred had the economy not tanked four years ago. Were hundreds of millions or more not directly affected by the depression through job loss, government austerity measures, or huge losses in capital, it is entirely possible that many of the most pressing issues of this year would never have occurred.

But that is not what is of importance here.

What is of importance is that largely youth and worker driven movements around the world have been making headlines, assembling huge crowds, and gaining access to a broader audience in ways that, I argue, have not existed–or at least have not existed at a time when social pressures were high enough to lead to different forms of collective action–and that timeless, spaceless dissemination of information has now become a critical part of the politics of social change. In other words, organizers have taken advantage of new digital technologies to circumvent traditional channels for knowledge (i.e. mainstream media), and that this has been a positive development for both democracy and supranational humanistic self-identification among younger people.

The other argument in my mind, and the one I really hope to find support for in my research is a little less straight forward but in the vein with much of the research already done on the Arab Spring. Put simply, I would like to demonstrate a causal relationship between the rise of digital and social media, and the changes described above in which the latter may not have come to be without the former, and that movements did not simply pick up digital tools and turn them to their advantage but actually spawned from the organic growth of spreading ideas via digital media. In terms of the youth this applies especially to social media.

So that is sort of where my head is at. I no longer intend to focus my efforts on analyzing the circumstances surrounding Uganda and Kony that led to the Invisible Children video. I do not think that it will aid me in making sense of Kony2012 AS PART OF A THE LARGER TREND that is really at the core of my questions about what I am seeing take place in the world and on my own computer.

No, the focus has shifted. 2012socialexperiment is no longer just about the Kony video, but about broader aspects of the year 2012 itself.

Feedback would be great, all. Please comment if you have any thoughts.

Of the total 714, seventy two percent were American, meaning twenty eight percent came from abroad.

However, if you create a subset for the “Anglo” countries (US, UK, AU, CA–which happen to be the top four on the list), we find that it makes up for eighty five percent of traffic, leaving only fifteen percent (or 105 visits) ‘foreign’ in the broader sense. Still I am learning a great deal about the inner workings of social media and effective methods for disseminating information. I haven’t posted much about actual events yet, as I am still waiting a bit to see how things shake out in the next thirty days or so. I will, however, discuss ‘Cover the Night’ and the facts and opinions that derive from it.

I will also start discussing the geopolitical history and situation in Central Africa with detail, in order to understand exactly what may or may not be going on and who the beneficiaries are.

Tomorrow is ‘Cover the Night’! Even if you didn’t buy an ‘action kit’ (which infuriates me…something for a later rant)–make a poster, picket for an hour, get attention–do something! Prove that when 100 million people watch a video about humanitarian justice and corruption they will make some sort of effort to voice their concerns!!!

I haven’t posted in a bit. So many things have happened since my initial post that it’s impossible to count. I’m still making sense of it all. The main point of my initial post is now beyond dispute, “KONY 2012” was the most viral video throughout the world since the beginning of the Internet. Many of my other thoughts still require time to answer. I have decided to continue to maintain this blog as a part of my thesis, “using social media to understand social media” as my header says.

This post contains my official thesis proposal, and it will be the issues and questions contained within that I will be focusing on and learning about for the next year.

Once again, any and all feedback is highly encouraged and greatly appreciated! Once I’ve started tackling some of these questions in greater depth I will post about my findings and how this idea is shaping up, as well as sharing particularly interesting bits of information I pick up along the way.

MALS THESIS PROPOSAL: SPRING 2012

Name: Julian Fenn

Student ID # xxxxxxx

Concentration: Globalization Studies

Independent Study title:

The Decline of the American Labor Movement

Term Completed: 11S

Independent Study Advisor: Dr. Ronald Edsforth

Title of Proposed Thesis Project: ????????????

THESIS PROPOSAL:

1. What is the issue that your thesis will address?

On March 5th, 2012 a humanitarian non-governmental organization named

Invisible Children released a video on various popular media sharing websites (such as Youtube) entitled “Kony 2012”. The video is thirty minutes long, and within a few short days it had been viewed over one hundred million times, making it officially the most ‘viral’ Internet video of all time. The video has a simple message: make African warlord Joseph Kony famous enough that citizens (particularly in the US) put pressure on their governments to assist in tracking him down and bringing him to justice. A noble and idealistic goal, and one that the moviemakers consciously directed not towards the ‘educated’ public, but at the youth—young adults from middle school on towards their college years—perhaps taking a cue from the largely youth driven movements of the Arab Spring of 2011. It represented a new form of activism. Far from the arrests and marginalization of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has drawn largely on semi-traditional forms of physical protest (even the Occupy camps have their Hooverville precedent), “Kony 2012” threw itself into the mainstream in an instant as the baby boomer generation began to take note of ‘whatever it is’ that was stirring up so many young people who are by and large considered to be an apathetic and apolitical demographic, despite their generally progressive political and social outlook.

The backlash was intense and almost immediate. Editorials, academics, bloggers, and news stations began to rip the movie and the organization apart for inaccuracies, oversimplification, misrepresentation, paternalism, and poorly handled finances. Finally the arrest of the NGO’s leader for lewd behavior in public brought down a heavy hand, and the organization has been trying to re-assess and re-brand itself.

My interest in these events is largely twofold. First, in response to film, its critics, and in the name of good social science, I want to take a step back. I want to find out who Kony is, where his army came from, why it was formed, and other pertinent historical and political facts that will help shed some light on the ‘bigger picture’ concerning the video, movement, and the geopolitics of the region. Second, and more importantly, I wish to address the interwoven issues of identity and youth politics in terms of social media and the potential it creates for new forms of collective action In other words, I am curious to find out if awareness and advocacy on a global scale will be the nesting place for a new form of action based on a ‘global’, rather than ‘national’ or ‘local’ identities among those who never knew the cold war or most of the actions of the twentieth century.

2. Address the academic disciplines from which you will draw and explain which of these disciplines will inform the methodology you use.

As an International Relations and Sociology double major for my bachelors, I

plan to draw mainly on those disciplines in order to understand both the highly complex political/military history and situation in Central Africa and the globalized movement which it has recently inspired. In terms of politics and international relations, I intend to draw first up on American foreign policy in the region, followed up by a realist geopolitical assessment of all the actors in the region, particularly Uganan president Yoweri Museveni who first came to power in 1986 and the Lords Resistance Army precursor in Northern Uganda beginning in the 1970s. Understanding how the US has ‘played’ Uganda and the region over time will help to reveal some of the depths to which this conflict has gone as well as suggest that historically preferential treatment of Museveni and his government may have added to the crisis, and the massacres. A realist geopolitical perspective of the region (mainly Uganda, CAR, DRC, and Sudan) will help ‘depoliticize’ the issue and provide a factual basis from which to see the situation, free of the agendas of humanitarian groups, rebels, and governments alike.

This will serve to provide a proper contextualization for a sociological analysis and critique of “Kony 2012”, its fallout, and implications. Essentially, I plan to use the event as a case study in new media, indentity politics among the youth, and the transference of social advocacy to social movement. I will track the debate and any actions as it moves forward, watching events like the Kony ‘night of action’ on April 20th and seeing if the pressure created by the movie will actually influence American military operations in Central Africa. Such an analysis may include comparisons with other ‘virtual’ movements of late—such as aspects of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Using mainly sociological theory and older case studies from the ‘analog’ era, I will ultimately attempt to show that “Kony 2012” is a unique event worth exploring that contains within it the seeds of a great deal of sociological information on how our world and its newest generation is changing.

I also created a small ‘experiment’ of my own in which I attempted to make a blog post about this thesis in order to see how far it would spread and how long it would last. At last count the site had 591 hits from over forty countries, peaking within four days of release and dying out completely after about ten. This, to me, serves as a reference point for the limits of an individual attempting to disseminate original information, and I was quite surprised as to how far it went, lending small credibility to the efficacy of the Internet as a tool for sparking the mind and movements.

3. What is the central research question you will address?

If I had to reduce my research down to a single question, it would be this—is

it significant that over one hundred million people (mainly youth) watched and reacted to a semi-factual, semi-political movie in the span of just one week—and what does that say about the future of collective actions by large groups? In doing so I will address many of the issues above, such as a growing personal belief (to be explored) that youth identity has in many ways transcended the nationalism of the 20th century and become global. In other words, are we beginning to see ourselves first as citizens of the world, and then as constituents in a given nation?

The military/political analysis of the first part of the project is meant to demystify much misinformation on behalf and against “Kony 2012” since it came out, as well as offer a chance to discuss how the movie was received in its ‘native land’. This should help to weave through ideology and political prejudice to produce a relatively objective view on the situation—and how that compares to Invisible Children’s own assessment of the situation. This will allow for greater penetration into the workings of the debate and movement, as inaccuracies and false claims used towards collective ends will be picked up on immediately. As this is obviously a working issue in progress, I can only speculate as to where it will lead, though I am confident that no matter the ‘outcome’ it will say volumes about youth, identity, and the era of the digital social movement.

4. How does this thesis project relate to your coursework in the MALS program?

This thesis relates almost directly to much of my coursework in MALS. My

first class with Misagh Parsa, entitled “Globalization and Economic Development” taught me a great deal about the causes of poverty among African nations, and reinforced other economic and military issues to which I had already been exposed. My final paper for that class, “Globalization: A Critical Examination From Both Sides of the Barricades” dealt largely with military and political issues, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The class “Globalization and Its Discontents” with Ronald Edsforth was the first to introduce to me to many issues related to identity, as well as the idea of a supranational outlook on the world. My final paper for him, “The New Global Ethic” was my first attempt at discussing how the globalization process has brought together disparate parts of the world, led to greater cosmopolitanism, and perhaps begun to forge new patterns of identity among, especially, the youth. That class was the spark for this project.

My independent study with Ronald Edsforth entitled “The Decline of the American Labor Movement” led me partially to the conclusion that ‘analog’ movements no longer have the effect they once did, partially as a result of repressive laws, and partly due to a paradigm of skepticism towards collective action by older Americans. Reading about the floundering of most unions, called “great dinosaurs” by one social scientist freed me up to think about other modes of protest and other forms of organization.

Finally, my last class with Ronald Edsforth and his wife Joanne Devine, “Global Media and Culture”, taught me a great deal about issues of framing and media bias which will be an inherent part of my project. It discussed the largely centralized media structure and those forms (i.e. the internet) which have still maintained relative decentralization and ‘digital democracy’. It forced me to view all news through a highly critical lens, looking for motive and meaning behind the words presented to me and helped me to judge ‘good’ journalism from ‘bad’ in terms beyond simple bias. The readings and discussion from that class will be key in helping me to maintain objectivity as I piece together my thesis bit by bit as events unfold.

5. Tentative Bibliography

Albright, Sec. Madeleine. “The United States and Africa: Building a Better Partnership.” U.S. Department

of State Dispatch 10.6 (1999): 5-8. Print.

Alden, Chris. “From Neglect to ‘Virtual Engagement’: The United States and Its New Paradigm For

Mission Statement:

This blog is meant to be a part of a Masters thesis I will be writing for a program in Globalization Studies at Dartmouth College until spring 2014.

Only a few of my posts are in the header above. Please scroll through to see everything.

The blog is indeed an experiment within the larger framework of the thesis. I would like to see how far this blog can go, geographically, demographically, and in terms of creating meaningful discussions. I hope to use this as a way to gauge the effectiveness of this form of social media--in coalescence with those it easily links to--from the perspective of a single organizer as compared to larger networks and organizations. I am seeking input, criticism, and the chance to talk with anyone who shares an interest in these subjects as the year progresses. If you find the contents of this site to be of value, please share them on FB, Twitter, etc etc. as that is the primary vehicle driving the blog forward and disseminating it to a wider audience.

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"If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation. "
--Eugene Debs

“The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated when compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”
--John Maynard Keynes

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice"
--Martin Luther King Jr.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world"
--Mohandas Gandhi

"Nations will rise and fall, but equality remains the ideal. The universal aim is to achieve respect for the entire human race, not just for the dominant few."
--Carlos P. Romulo

"I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
--Edward Everett